


Something Rich and Strange

by que_sera



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Agender Character, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/que_sera/pseuds/que_sera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On an island there was a girl, who grew up with a spirit as her protector. When she was nine, she learned the spirit’s name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Rich and Strange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Themistoklis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themistoklis/gifts).



> Thank you so much for such a wonderful Yuletide prompt! This was very much a labor of Shakespearean love, and any lines you recognize are his. I have also tried very hard to attribute no pronouns to Ariel - if I have slipped up, please let me know in the comments.

iv.

As Ferdinand walked back into the forest in search of more wood to split, Miranda took a moment to breathe deeply. Then she took another. Her heart gamboled within her chest, tossed up and spun in circles like driftwood on the waves during a storm. Her ears still rang with the force of Ferdinand’s words – “wife,” and “husband.” 

Miranda slipped away from the clearing and out into the trees. “Ariel?” she called softly. Soon she felt the trees quiver at Ariel’s arrival, stretching out their leaves to greet the spirit in their own language. 

She waited, but Ariel did not appear. “Why don't you come out?” she asked.

“Your father has commanded me to remain invisible to all sight but his,” came Ariel’s ghostly reply. 

She huffed. “That’s fair inconvenient,” she said, but she smiled as she said it, and around her she could feel Ariel’s laughter ripple the air. She loved her father, but he often made such silly decisions.

Before Ariel could ask her why she had called, she turned to where she felt the spirit’s presence most strongly, tucked along the limbs of an ancient tree. “Have you seen the prince? Have you met Ferdinand?”

“Yes.” Ariel’s voice spoke of far more than simple agreement, and Miranda’s heart plummeted.

“Oh Ariel, tell me father has not sent you to torment him! He has lost so much to come to this island, his father and his homeland, and I could not bear it if he suffered more.”

“The prince’s father is alive,” Ariel responded. “Your father has commanded only that I keep them apart for a time. The prince’s party is all unhurt.”

All Miranda's fear rushed out of her at once, and she wrapped her arms around herself in lightheaded relief as it left her empty. She spoke without any knowledge of what words would come. “Oh, I am glad. How happy Ferdinand will be!”

She felt Ariel move closer to her. “You asked him if he loved you.”

She shivered. “I did.” And he had answered her with himself, with that never-before-beautiful word, _wife_.

“Do you love him?” 

“I do.” Miranda spoke clearly, sharp as the crack of rock against rock on the shore. “Perhaps I should think myself foolish, to be so sure. But I cannot imagine loving another better, not if I were to meet every man in the world.”

Ariel was silent for so long that Miranda began to wonder if she had missed the subtle signs of the spirit’s exit, even though it had been years since she had made such a mistake. 

“And will he keep you safe?” Ariel asked at last.

Miranda frowned. “Yes, I believe he would – but I want to keep _him_ safe,” she said. Her speech ran away from her, matching the beat of her racing heart. “My father punishes him unjustly, making him slave for us, and I would take his punishment from him if I could – even though he is stronger than I, even though I do not doubt his body or his heart. I want him to be mine forever, and I his, and for him never to suffer a moment in all his life, if only I could prevent it.” 

Her words echoed among the trees, and she trembled all over. For a moment all was silent.

Then she felt Ariel all around her, that rush of electricity and warmth that was Ariel’s embrace. She relaxed into it, allowing Ariel’s familiar presence to soothe and comfort her newly wild heart.

 _Then yes, Miranda._ Like this, Ariel’s voice sounded deep within her mind, unhindered and unchanged by passing through air to her ears. _I do believe you love._

 

ii.

Miranda had first spoken to the spirit when she was nine.

“Are you my mother?” she had asked, one day when it had seemed too strange not to acknowledge the presence she felt always at her side.

For a long time she heard only the wind across the island and the low rushing sound of the endless water. Miranda breathed in with the tide, holding her breath as each wave dissolved into foam, letting it out when it began to retreat into the sea. “No,” answered a voice at last.

“Papa says that Mother watches over me from Heaven, because she loves me very much, even though I can’t see her.”

“I am not your mother,” the spirit said again.

Miranda thought about that. “But you watch over me?”

“Yes.”

Miranda nodded. “Thank you.” The spirit said nothing, but the air around Miranda quivered. Her scalp prickled. She could smell lightning in the air. 

"What is your name?" she asked. 

"Ariel." She heard the name directly in her ear, soft and charged like a secret. "My name is Ariel."

 

iii.

Ariel listened carefully as Miranda raged, driven near to tears by her father’s latest edict not to stir from their home while he strengthened his magic in trance each afternoon, but to wait until he awoke and inform him of her intended destination. She now faced long hours within their cheerless cell, without the comfort of wind and waves to lull away the advancing time. 

“If you do not approve of your father’s commands, then why do you obey him?” Ariel asked. “You are bound by no geas, to obey when you desire otherwise.”

Miranda whipped around to stare at Ariel, eyes wide within her flushed face. “But of course I love him,” she answered. “I know he gives me orders because he loves me, and he wants me to be safe. That's why I obey him.” Miranda sighed, and all the anger seemed to rush out with her breath. “I just wish he could see that sometimes, I can keep _myself_ safe.” 

After a few moments of staring discouragedly out to sea, Miranda looked at Ariel and managed a little smile. “At the very least, he should be able to trust you to protect me,” she said. “After all, you have been doing it my entire life.”

“A fact of which your father still believes you unaware,” Ariel pointed out, amusement skipping word to word like stones over water. 

Miranda laughed. “I don’t know how he thought I would not know. I hear him speak to you often. And it is easy to tell when you are and are not here, even when you are invisible.”

Prospero could not tell when Ariel was present. He assumed that Ariel remained away unless summoned, that Ariel’s visibility and presence always coincided unless specifically ordered otherwise. Ariel did not tell any of this to Miranda.

“If I were to walk down to shore, even now while Papa is entranced,” Miranda mused, “you would never let anything happen to me, would you?”

“Never.” Miranda looked up in surprise, and Ariel quieted the air around them, which still thrilled with the power of raging storm winds. Ariel’s vehemence had wakened the power of the island, which now surged eagerly, waiting to be used. 

Miranda looked thoughtfully at Ariel, but at last shook her head. “No. The last ship passing so close has made him afraid, and he is not thinking. I will obey him for today, and tomorrow, and then I will ask him again. Perhaps then he will remember about you, and give me my freedom once more.”

“He loves you,” Ariel offered, certain only because she was so certain. “I do not believe he will leave you bound.”

This time, Miranda's smile was strong. “I do not believe he will either.”

 

v.

“Do you love me, master?” Ariel asked, in the breath between Prospero's command and seeing it done. 

“Dearly, my delicate Ariel.” Prospero’s eyes did not move from Miranda and her prince, who stood hands-clasped and heads together. Ariel looked too. Miranda’s open face trembled with joy, an overwhelmed smile seeking and losing her lips as she basked in the twin suns of her father's approval and her prince's love. 

After a frozen moment, Prospero shook his head, then glanced back at Ariel. He frowned. “Do not approach until you hear me call.”

Ariel went.

 

i.

Ariel gazed at the man who had broken open his wooden prison with what felt very much like curiosity, stirring at last after decades of disuse. It had been many long years since Ariel had seen a human, but humans then had not appeared so very ragged, so beaten down by no more than the wind and water of the island. 

“I have freed you from an eternity of imprisonment, and in return I have bound you to my service,” the man rasped. As he spoke, fine grains of sand fell from his beard. Ariel watched as the man’s hands trembled, drawing magical shapes in the air with fingers that shook. “When I no longer have need of you, I will free you to your own devices, provided that you do no harm to me and mine. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” No mortal magic could bind Ariel, but this man did not need to know that. With one word, Ariel had invoked all the power of the island to enforce the magician’s will - proper payment for the debt incurred. It did not matter if the man refused to free Ariel as he had promised. His magic did not begin to compare to that of Sycorax, and would never outlast his own short life. What was a few decades of service compared to eternity in a cloven pine? 

“You will serve me when I ask. You will perform any task of magic that I command. You will remain out of sight unless called upon.”

“Yes,” said Ariel. The island echoed with agreement.

The man hesitated. Ariel wondered if he had finished. At last, the man reached down and pulled away the top few layers from the small pile of ragged clothing that had languished unnoticed at his feet.

“This is your most important charge,” the man said. “My daughter, Miranda.”

Ariel stared. The child was female, like and unlike her father, like and unlike the witch Sycorax. Even Caliban at birth had never seemed so small.

“She is quite young now, but she will grow,” the man said. “I cannot always be sure of keeping her out of danger. You will watch her, every time I am unable to do so myself, and any time I do not have need of you for another purpose.”

At that moment the child opened her eyes. Ariel could not help but lean forward to meet them. 

Brown eyes, the color of island mud and the bark of Ariel’s pine, stared back in undisguised interest. _She has never seen a creature like me before,_ Ariel thought. All at once, the girl reached out a hand, curiosity written in each line of her questing fingers. Taken aback, Ariel allowed her fingers to make contact. 

Something like warmth – or electricity – or the minutest brush of the island’s own magic – rushed through Ariel’s form. Ariel faded in surprise, and the girl’s fingers fell through air. She laughed and clapped her hands. 

Still staring, it took Ariel a few moments to realize the man was speaking. “Do you accept your task?” Uncertain, perhaps, of the wisdom of his final charge, the man spoke as he would to a human vassal, who could choose whether or not to obey. Perhaps he could even sense, in a dim animal way, the enormity of Ariel’s power, the force he was attempting so foolishly to contain with human magics. 

“Yes.”

All of the island rose up within Ariel and flowed onward, into the girl – into _Miranda_ – and Ariel felt her heartbeat as the waves on the shore, as the endless pull of moon on tides. The island bound them as surely as Ariel had been bound to the cloven pine. 

Ariel and the island would keep her safe.


End file.
